In many dance films there’s no speaking, but here there is space for a real narrative. About the division of two countries. And the divorce of two peoples.
An elderly man and a young woman in an interrogation room. He has often told his story. A story about a land torn in two: Malaysia and Singapore. And a story about the man’s lover who left for Singapore with her family while he stayed behind in Malaysia.
Programmer Note by Gertjan Zuilhof:
This may not be an easy film to grasp for those unfamiliar with the history of Singapore and Malaysia. It helps if you know that ties between the two are fraught, to say the least. They were once British colonies and they were briefly also a single country, but in 1965 both were separated for good. Singapore became a small, very rich country with a mainly Chinese population, whilst Malaysia remained a large, more Malaysian and Islamic land and many of its citizens remained poor.
So, if a young Chinese woman speaks to an older, incarcerated Malaysian man on behalf of Singapore, that’s no coincidence. It is the country’s division, which is also the split between two lovers in the story.
Quite a complex background story, particularly for a dance film because a story like this cannot be danced. That is why it has both dialogue and dance scenes. The beauty being that the actors with talking roles perform the most emotive dance.